And Constantine?

The meaning of his entire life has hinged upon Infinite Destiny—his driving need to finish what his father started, to prove that he is worthy. Today must have felt like an omen of his mortality, the truth in his father’s words. That his father was right about him, after all.

He is going to die young, die soon, and that no number of accomplishments will change that.

My attention goes back to all the sketches on the walls. Why do you really want those Maran artifacts? I ask him again.

He doesn’t answer, but I see his hands skimming repeatedly over the papers scattered on his desk. The symbols scrawled across those pages are in the language of the Early Ones, but I can see notes along their edges written in Constantine’s hand, along with drawings of the sun and the moon.

I look back again at the table closest to me, where the keys lie. Beside them is the stack of papers, sketches and blueprints. On impulse, I slip the top paper off the stack and roll it silently up, sliding it into my pocket.

As I do, Constantine keeps his head down and stops his hand over a paper with Mara on the map before him.

If I could only unlock them, he finally mutters through our link. It could solve everything.

Unlock what? I ask.

I’ll know it when I see it, he answers.

Maybe you’re just scared to die, I tell him, my voice soft and steady.

He turns his profile toward me. His eyes search me with a spark of life, a sober moment through his drunken tirade. When he finally speaks, the warning in his voice is frighteningly still. It is the air before the lightning strikes.

Get out, Talin, or I will order my soldiers to tear your mother limb from limb and hang her from the walls. He turns his back again. Get out.

I walk away. My last image of him tonight is his hunched silhouette outlined by candlelight, his head bowed before all the tapestries on the wall—the conquests that insist he has won.

When I reach the hidden door, I cast one final look at him over my shoulder. He doesn’t bother glancing my way again. Instead, he looks like how he did before I came in.

Not a Premier.

Not a leader.

Just a young man willing to destroy nations in a quest for more time, while death waits inevitably for him in its corner.

26

RED

I’ve always thought that Cardinia transforms at night.

During the day, the streets are a riot of color and sound, the rivers filled with boats and the walls draped with banners and flowers. The sculptures lining the thoroughfares fill the city with the flavor of art, and people dine outside with them in the backdrop, while children run by with honeyed sweets on sticks. It looks like what the Federation thinks it is.

At night, though, when the wide avenues empty and revelers retreat to their beds, the chairs and tables sit empty along the streets. The banners look somber, ominous against the walls. The ground is littered with confetti. And the sculptures, carefully chosen to be works of art beautifying the city, look in the darkness like the truth: skeletons stolen from other places, like bleached bone and teeth, their silhouettes carving up the night sky.